One tiny daffodil blade has broken through. I found it this morning while rescuing Scout who had wrapped herself around a tree and was crying like she’d die ~ like I don’t always come and get her every time she does this. No matter how many times I walk her back the other way, unwinding as she goes, she cannot do it by herself. Like me and my surprise to see that baby green spear again, as if spring weren’t coming back this year.​I love winter, so long as the ground is snowy or dry. But muddy. . . gee whiz I hate muddy winter. I hate it because dogs love it, which means we get muddy winter outdoors and in. My floors are filthy, and the dogs smell constantly like . . . well, like wet and muddy dogs. Winter dog baths are not fun because then the bathroom (instead of the back deck) has to be power washed as well. Chickens like the mud as well, but they stay outdoors no matter what. Their feet get hilariously muddy, then tarred with feathers and pine bedding which they spend the afternoons pecking off. They comb the mud for bits of grass and other treats, then shake their feathers out and bask in the winter sun.

I remind myself the winter’s barely half over, but it’s a pretty day and I saw a flower blade. We’ll blink and spring will be here, everything brand-new baby green. On days like this we get to live in both seasons, if only in our thoughts. I pray the day is warm in ways you did not expect.

I pray the snowy, frigid day finds you hands to work and hearts to God as the Quakers say. My backyard is never more beautiful than when all those dirty tennis balls, bare spots, and mole mounds are blanketed in a half-foot of snow. How perfectly does that bright-white coverlet conceal the truth about that fall yard clean-up I never finished. Not a poor analogy for a Martin Luther King Day reflection.I told myself it was because of bedtime that I couldn’t watch it all, but that is not the truth of it. The film hurt my heart too much to watch all in one sitting. I Am Not Your Negro envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, a radical narration about race in America, using the writer’s original words. Alongside a flood of archival pictures and video, the film draws upon Baldwin’s notes on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. to explore the current racial narrative in America. You can watch it here: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/i-am-not-your-negro/.

I share it with you as part of the new year’s plan which I introduced in Sunday’s sermon: a plan to integrate biblical justice into the fabric of our life together. Our text was John 2:1-11. Here is a brief cut from the sermon text:

Justice Matters, friends. It must – if we are to be the church that Jesus' mother prophesied in Luke, chapter 1.

Thy kingdom come, He Himself taught us to pray, on earth as it is heaven. This kingdom of God which Mary described is the heart of biblical justice. The kingdom of God is where God’s people take seriously God’s plainly stated preference for the poor, the stranger, the refugee, the dispossessed, the prisoner, the oppressed.

The kingdom of God on earthas it is in heavenis also where God’s people take seriously God's plainly stated promise that from us who have been given so much, much is expected.

Biblical justice is lived out in three-way partnership between God, humanity, and the non-human Creation. God and the non-human Creation have kept their part of this covenant, while humanity's record is . . . spotty – having risen to great heights now and then, but mostly doing too little too late.

Because at the end of the day, the work of justice is hard. It take lots of time and energy, time and energy that those of us with time and energy to spare might otherwise spend feathering our own nests or binge-watching Netflix.

If being church matters, and I know that it does to you, then my hope, prayer, and intention is that 2018 will be the year in which justice matters to us more than it ever has before.

The year we take bigger steps in:

our understanding of biblical justice;

our identity as a people committed to biblical justice;

our activity in the work of biblical justice in our own time and place.

These three are the takeaways: understanding, identity and activity. We will work with them all year in Bible study, sermon, worship, special programs, and service. I pray you’ll begin the internal work now of opening your spirit and the spirit of our life together to what God has to show us in the ways of justice. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette

35 degrees is a nice alternative to the “+2 but feels like -10” of last week. The sun is also shining, which always makes winter seem less hopeless. Some websites say big snow is coming by week’s end, but they’ve made such promises before so I try not to get my hopes up. The chickens loves this weather through and through. The colder it gets, the more they pile up in the henhouse. At +10 degrees they still sleep outside all night. I trek down there twice a day to trade their frozen bucket for thawed water. They drink and drink knowing it won’t stay thawed very long. In the afternoons I let them out to eat grass and snow. They stand on one foot to keep the other warm, like flamingos. One day I cooked them a pot of oatmeal and stirred in several sticks of string cheese. I should have made a movie of them eating – plunging their heads into the steamy cloud, pulling back the stretchy gooey oatsy cheese.

The woods are bare as bones and I can see the junkyard cars glinting on the ridge. I pretend it’s jewels made just for us, else I get mad that they never clean it up. Anyway, I can only see it in the winter and I’ve gotten too lazy to complain. Some boys came over and split loads and loads of wood for when my husband’s out of town almost two whole weeks. I’ll be lonely but I'll be warm, so he’s still taking care of me while he’s gone.

I like pretending winter is the warmest season, knowing only privileged people think so. Except for tending chickens I rarely spend more than five minutes outdoors. My garaged and heated car moves me from one heated building to another, where I am mostly sitting down and thinking about things. I sit and think and all the while wear soft, warm clothes with a blanket handy should there be a chill. So for all the people who know better – that winters like this winter are not the warmest season – let us give a thought.

The ones at 4 AM who check the school bus roads;

People who have to go to work no matter what: doctors, nurses, EMT’s, firefighters, police, hospital & nursing home staffs;

Road crew workers – yikes, they must be cold!

People without decent housing to keep them and their kids safe in freezing weather;

Farmers with animals to tend;

HVAC, plumbers and all the service people who keep our houses warm and safe.

God bless and be with them and with all the ones I left out. Should the weather get crazy again, stay home if you can and take care of your neighbors.

On Sunday Rob* asked for New Year’s resolutions and then later asked me if we ought to have a church-wide resolution too. “That would be fun,” I said, or something like it, paying him less attention than I should. But it came to mind again this morning reading Thomas à Kempis. The New Year’s resolution I would offer to all of us and to our life together is this: Be At Peace.

Be at peace with one another . . . .

Be at peace with the world . . . .

Be at peace in any circumstance . . . .

As Thomas explains so thoroughly in The Imitation of Christ, being at peace is entirely internal work, work between oneself and God. For your reflection - I’ve written out Book II, Chapter 3 for you here. This is Ronald Knox’s translation with my own gender pronoun adjustments. It’s as good a piece as one will find on how to be a church. I pray you’ll join me in this adventure of peace.

~ peace & prayers, pastor annette​

The Imitation of ChristTranslated from the Latin by Ronald KnoxBook II, Chapter 3On the Character of a Peaceable Person

Peace in our own soul first of all, then you can think about making peace between other people. Peaceable folk do more good than learned folk do. When one is at the mercy of one’s own feelings, one misinterprets the most innocent actions, always ready to believe the worst; whereas your peaceable person sees good everywhere; at peace within, never suspicious of others. It’s when you become discontented and unbalanced that your mind is torn by suspicions; there is no rest for you, no rest for those around you. You are always saying the wrong thing, and missing your chance of doing the right thing; you are jealous about your rights, and forget that you have duties. If you will begin by having a high standard for yourself, you can afford to have a high standard for other people.

How is it that you are so glib in excusing yourself, putting a good colour on your own actions, and won’t listen when excuses are offered to you? Honesty should make you accuse yourself, excuse your neighbour; bear with others when you expect them to bear so much from you. Believe me, you’ve got a long way to go before you can lay claim to real charity, real humility. There should only be one target for all this angry resentment - yourself. You get on well with gentle, good-natured folk? Why, so does everybody; we all like to have friends around us, we all have a soft spot for the person who agrees with us. But when people are difficult and cross-grained, when they get out of hand and keep on contradicting us, to keep on good terms with them - ah, that needs a lot of grace; that’s a grown-up’s job, and you can’t praise it too highly.

People differ so; there are contented people, ready to lived contentedly with others; and there are restless people who give no rest to those around them, a burden to others and a worse burden to themselves; and there are those who restrain their own passions, and do their best to restrain the passions of others. But in this imperfect life, when all’s said and done, peace doesn’t mean having no enemies, it means being ready to put up with ill-treatment.

It’s the ones who have learnt the craft of suffering who really enjoy peace. They are their own masters and the world lies at their feet; they have Christ as their friend and heaven as their inheritance.

I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here. Enjoy! Pastor Annette

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